In the second week of June, 1864, at the end of Ulysses Grant’s Overland campaign from the Rapidan River, the Union and Confederate armies of the eastern theater occupied the same ground they had contested two years previously. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia defended the northeastern approaches to Richmond from the spot where he had launched his ferocious attacks on George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac in 1862. This time Lee lacked the strength to repeat his offensive. Ulysses Grant, meanwhile, enjoyed the unlimited War Department support that McClellan had been denied, so he was not to be discouraged or recalled. Grant would clearly make another stab at Richmond, probably by trying to skirt Lee’s front as he had so many times since crossing the Rapidan. Lee anticipated that the next attack would come from one side of the Chickahominy River or the other. Rather than face the maze of swamps and streams north and east of Richmond, Grant decided to transport his army across the James River and strike rapidly for Petersburg, the crucial rail hub 25 miles below the Confederate capital. The army that controlled Petersburg controlled Richmond.